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TekuTeku Ishikawa

01-02-2017Wearing Kimono in Historic Higashi-chayagai

Happy New Year, everyone!

Hokuriku’s winters may be severe, but Kanazawa has a wealth of spots where you can experience traditional Japanese culture, so let’s brave the cold and head out for some fun!

For this season’s Tekuteku, Russian CIR Anna and Korean CIR Minjeong went to dress up in kimono. The most popular seasons for wearing kimono are usually in the spring and autumn, to coincide with the cherry blossoms and changing leaves, respectively, but we decided to do it in January, wearing a gorgeous kimono in the celebratory spirit of the New Year’s season instead.

The shop we visited to try on kimono was Kimono Rental Shop Kokoyui.

Here is how you can set up your own kimono-wearing experience:

1. First, make a reservation via phone or the homepage. Once you’ve made a reservation, you can go straight to the shop (no need to bring anything with you).

２．Next, choose a plan. There are various different plans, so pick the one that suits you best. We chose the “Aya Plan”. It’s a simple and casual plan perfect for just walking around the city.

３．Finally, the day of your visit has arrived! Now you can have fun choosing the kimono, obi sash, bag and other accessories that match your style. You can pick out your outfit at you leisure—while some may have a complete outfit in five minutes, some may take an hour getting their look just right. In our case, we decided on instinct, so we were done fairly quickly.

４. Next, you will be dressed in your kimono by a professional. We were surprised by how many layers must be put on—it would be impossible to wear a kimono without an assistant to help.

５．When you’re done getting dressed, next is hair styling. The styling is done to match your kimono. When the styling is finished, you can pick whichever hair ornament you like to complete the look.

６．Now you’re finally ready to enjoy Kanazawa all dressed up in your beautiful kimono! You’re free to walk wherever you like. We chose to walk around Higashi-chayagai, Kanazawa’s historic tea house district.

When we got to Higashi-chayagai, the first thing we saw was a rickshaw.

Neither of us had ridden one before, so we decided to give it a try. While we were driven around in our kimonos, we also learned a lot about the area that we had never heard before, despite having lived in Kanazawa for a while. Being driven around such a historic district by rickshaw while wearing kimonos, we almost felt like we had traveled back in time.

As we took a relaxing ride around Higashi-chayagai, we took a lot of photos to remember our day.

7．Returning your kimono is very simple.

You can return to the shop by 6pm to change and return your kimono, or if you can’t make it in time for 6pm you can change elsewhere and then place it in the return box. You can also return them at some Kanazawa hotels.

We had a lovely day exploring Kanazawa with our kimonos. Kanazawa is a city with a beautiful historical cityscape that goes perfectly with the traditional look of a kimono, so why not try exploring Kanazawa in a kimono yourself?